Advice with replacement laptop HDD

dexta1969

My Toshiba Satellite laptop is only 18 months old and I've had a warning regarding a hard drive failure.
I've called Toshiba UK and, although very helpful, were unrepentant regarding what I consider a short life for such a vital part citing it could be my fault or a virus etc.
Just wondered if anybody else had had any problems regarding Toshiba and their hard drives? Is it a problem across the range where I can try to argue a freebie repair or is it a one off?
Has anybody had any luck getting a free repair out of warranty?

Thanks in advance, Steve

smos585

I believe that you need to eliminate any malware, and/or temp repairable hard drive errors.

1. For starters downlaod malwarebytes from here. and run it. http://www.filehippo.com/download_malwarebytes_anti_malware/

2. Run a chkdsk c:/r within the command prompt to resolve temp errors, the report at the end will tell you if you actually do have bad sectors. If you do this then on the next boot it will run before Windows loads fully.

russell_e

What HDD is it?

I would run the manufacturer's utility on it & see what that reports.

The-Gaffer

run hdd regenerator on it which will confirm if it really is FUBARED or just needin a clean ie cc cleaner glary utilties or malware bites, or needin wiped, i stand by the statement HDD REGENERATOR will confirm if its genuinely fkud,

from a torrent site obviously so its free,


:money:

robmar0se

russell_e wrote: »

What HDD is it?

I would run the manufacturer's utility on it & see what that reports.

You only need to do this if the Windows chkdsk utility reports bad sectors. If you choose certain options when running the manufacturer's utilities you may end up wiping the system unnecessarilty.

Chkdsk /r more often than not restores the disk so its worth starting with that.

The-Gaffer

robmar0se wrote: »

You only need to do this if the Windows chkdsk utility reports bad sectors. If you choose certain options when running the manufacturer's utilities you may end up wiping the system unnecessarilty.

Chkdsk /r more often than not restores the disk so its worth starting with that.

Relevant advice to be fair hdd regenerators more specialist i suppose, yeah right click your hard drive hit properties, tools select check disk itll tell ya it needs exclusive access, follow prompts, and see what happens

ALSO try runnin SFC system file checker, example start run cmd, sfc/scannow which will make sure alls well in pc land,

:money:

prowla

Firstly, make a copy of any data that you consider to be important that is on it.

Secondly, download a tool called "ProduKey", which will give you a list of the licence codes for your Windows products on your laptop.

Thirdly, hard drives can fail, but less than 2 years seems to be a bit of a short lifespan. I would think that anybody buying a computer could have a reasonable expectation that a HDD would last well beyond 18 months. The manufacturers quote a MTBF (mean time between failures) for hard drives; if yours is significantly at odds with that then I would expect them to replace it.

The one caveat on the replacement is how the laptop has been treated; hard drives don't like being bashed about, but if the laptop itself looks spick and span then that angle should be covered.

smos585

Me again!

The reason for suggesting malwarebytes is that the "fake alert" virus reports problems with hard drives, etc, so that why I suggested downloading and running malwarebytes - I should add that it may be necessary ti run in safemode if it has become too invasive.

dexta1969

Wow! Thanks for all the help peeps, I'll be trying much of this stuff tomorrow and I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks 18 months is short life for such a vital component. I'll let you know how i get on, thanks again